


love, in four parts.

by spycaptain



Category: Naruto
Genre: I am updating my tags to beg for comments, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5467574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spycaptain/pseuds/spycaptain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(we learn, we laugh, we fear, we begin again.)<br/>Kakashi doesn’t look up from his book, but flips the page in an insolent manner - like he’s throwing a minor tantrum, contained perfectly and only expressed through vigorous literary enjoyment. Iruka wants to kill him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love, in four parts.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Foorah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foorah/gifts).



Love, in four parts  ---

(we learn, we laugh, we fear, we begin again.)

 

_we learn._

Iruka’s gotten better at predicting exactly when Kakashi will make his arrival. Dates and times are all suggestions to the jounin, but in the six months they’ve been together, Iruka has learned what matters and what will draw Kakashi back home in a timely fashion.

Dinner is usually something Kakashi makes sure to be back for. Iruka suspects it’s because the man blossoms in the mundane. Minor moments of peace and solitude are cherished things, especially when it comes with both food and beloved company.

That’s what Iruka tells himself anyway, as he chops the vegetables. It’s the third Friday of the month, and time for his signature ‘take everything in the fridge and throw it all together’ stir fry.

“So,” Kakashi starts, taking his usual seat at the table, resting in his chin in his hand like he always does before a particularly good story. Iruka grins. “I discovered something interesting today while rummaging around underneath the mission room.”

Classified files were generally held in two places: beneath the Hokage’s office, and in a room beneath the missions building. Neither location was uncommon knowledge for an active duty shinobi, though access to them obviously was.

Kakashi being there is… unusual, but not unexpected. So Iruka continues with dinner, minimally curious, and not at all concerned. “Really? A shinobi snooping around and discovering something? Since when?”

“Since today, sensei.” And there’s an unusual in Kakashi’s voice that is enough to make Iruka pause. He turns around to face Kakashi at the table. Kakashi who has his token pleasant and misleading smile, who is looking at Iruka like Iruka is a puzzle and not the man he’s been in a relationship with for six months, and fucking for a year.

“What’s with your tone?” Iruka asks.

Kakashi’s chin still rests in his hand, and he hums. “Do you want to know what it was I discovered?”

The previously pleasant feeling sinks with a sudden chill, and Iruka realizes that whatever Kakashi wants to talk about -- it’s not going to be something Iruka wants to discuss. “I don’t think so,” he says, finally, setting his knife down on the counter and leaning back to watch Kakashi. “But I don’t think you care about that, so get on with it.”

If Iruka could see Kakashi’s grin, it would be shit-eating, the kind of confident malaise that makes Iruka want to drag him out back and shoot him.

“I found your blood on some of the records,” Kakashi says, waving his free hand for Iruka to see. His thumb was red, with the crusted mark of having been used for a summon. “Well, to be more precise, Bisuke did. At first I didn’t think much of it -- you were a bit of a paper pusher back in the day --”

“Just a bit.”

“-- and I figured, what’s a paper cut here and there when organizing classified files?”

Iruka holds back a sigh. He is used to Kakashi’s posturing, to the infantile way the man will work up a great story for an even greater point if only to admire his own propensity for bullshit.

Iruka waits, patient, for three whole minutes of a rant he does not care to listen to before ending Kakashi’s circular story.

“It wasn’t my blood. It was my mothers.”

Kakashi pauses as Iruka pushes himself off and away from the counter, moving to take a seat at the table. When he sits, Iruka drums his fingers on the table, awkward as he chews on the inside of his lip. Both men sit in silence as Iruka searches for the right words; Kakashi with his blank gaze, Iruka with his idle motions.

“She, uh.” Iruka sighs, running his hand down his face, before he continues. “She used to seal documents for the Hokage. That was something her clan did. Blood seals, and the like. So there are… hundreds of them, probably, sitting down there with her blood on them, sealed away and impossible to open.”

With one finger, Iruka traces a circular design on the table. “It looked like this, yeah? Or maybe --” he traces another, this one triangular. “-- like this?”

Kakashi nods. “Like the second.”

“I can open the second ones.” Iruka says. “The first ones I can’t.”

Iruka watches Kakashi, and the thoughtful look in his one eye, and prepares himself for the question before it’s even spoken. Kakashi with his Sharingan, Kakashi with his perfect, precise memory, Kakashi with ANBU files sealed in Iruka’s blood deep under the Hokage’s office, to sit pristine and untouched beside Cat, and Quail, and Fox, and the hundreds of other files Iruka has helped seal away.

Kakashi who seems to be putting this all together right now, while the meat for Iruka’s ‘take everything in the fridge and throw it all together’ sizzles and cooks on the stove. His eye narrows, and Iruka watches Kakashi go through a list of names in his head.

“Meerkat?” He asks, sounding unsure.

Iruka grins. “Mongoose.”

“Fuuuuuck.” Kakashi’s posture falls at the revelation, and he leans back into his seat. He watches Iruka, who sits patiently, and allows himself to be subjected to the suspicious scrutiny.

Six months isn’t that long, Iruka thinks. He half expected Kakashi to never actually know.

“Was it obvious?” Kakashi asks.

Iruka shakes his head. “No, I only met you once in the hospital. You were right --- I was a bit of a paper pusher. You wouldn’t have seen me.”

A silence, then:

“But Cat knows.”

Kakashi swears, and Iruka laughs, standing back up to finish the stir fry.

 

_we laugh._

Iruka tries his very best not to ruin the surprise. He really does. But it’s so difficult not to - with Naruto running around in near panicked state, Kakashi has to have some level of suspicion, and the way his other students stand protective guard over Hinata is not making the secret any easier to keep.

It’s when Naruto runs by with a handful of candles that Iruka lets out a long, slow sigh, and turns to Kakashi.

“If you ruin this for them, I will hurt you.”

Kakashi doesn’t look up from his book, but flips the page in an insolent manner - like he’s throwing a minor tantrum, contained perfectly and only expressed through vigorous literary enjoyment. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Iruka nods and leans back against the couch, closing his eyes to patiently wait out Naruto’s ill-planned announcement. Sakura can be heard in the background, yelling about table settings and birthday cupcakes, and Iruka is fairly sure that the leaves of his favorite tree have been bursting into black flame in time with Naruto’s panicked screaming ever since Sasuke arrived.

“Who’s birthday is it again?” Kakashi asks, flipping another page.

Iruka grits his teeth. “I have absolutely no idea.”

When the moment finally arrives - when Sai steps in and says, ‘Naruto told me to tell you to get Kakashi-sensei ready for his surprise birthday party.’ - Iruka is ready to kill them all. To take his precious former students to some abandoned shack and slit their throats in a quiet fashion, and enjoy Kakashi’s birthday cake all to himself as he watches them bleed out in blessed silence.

But it isn’t Sai’s fault he is emotionally crippled, so Iruka stands up with a graceful smile and a sharp whistle to get Kakashi’s attention. Book still in hand, Kakashi obediently stands up, and begins walking to the door to the back yard, waiting by the exit for Iruka to come up behind him and cover his eyes.

“For the sake of my sanity, please act surprised,” Iruka begs, and nudges Kakashi forward past the first step, gracefully down the three little stairs and onto their back porch.

“I’m always surprised whenever Naruto accomplishes something.”

Kakashi jumps as Iruka pinches his side, and finishes the rest of his funeral march in obedient silence. With a smile in his voice he can’t contain, Iruka asks Kakashi, “Are you ready?”

“For my precious students to finally turn against me and ---”

Iruka pulls his hands away, and watches Kakashi stare.

In front of the two of them, a table with a cake. A simple monstrosity, possibly baked by Sai, who stands nervously beside it, Sakura beside him in support. Sasuke, dark and brooding like always, holding a basket full of books, and Naruto ---

Naruto beside Hinata, with a sign that reads: “Happy Birthday, Grandpa!” And an arrow pointing dramatically at her belly.

Iruka watches Kakashi stand in wondered silence, both wide eyes staring intently at Hinata, before Iruka pokes him in the side to prompt action.

No sound except a panicked breath, and Iruka pokes him again. “You’re the grandpa here, Kakashi,” he says quietly, and pushes Kakashi forward to his students.

“You’d be the perfect grandpa,” Sai says. “You already have the grey hair.”

Sakura smacks him, but adds: “And the lazy eyes!”

“And poor memory for important life events.” Sasuke says, and gets smacked as well.

Naruto pushes Hinata forward to Kakashi, and Iruka nudges Kakashi again towards her.

“She’s pregnant, not porcelain.” Iruka sighs.

“We both talked about it,” Naruto says, holding Hinata’s hand with a goofy, radiant grin. “And we both agreed you’d be a great grandpa, Kakashi-sensei. And we know you have important Hokage business, but that’s okay, I’ll totally take some of that responsibility off your shoulders, so you can be--” Naruto pauses, and looks at Iruka.

“A grumpy old man swaddled by babies.” Iruka finishes, right at the moment Kakashi’s panic sets in, and he teleports away.

Sakura begins cutting the cake, unsurprised, and hands Iruka the first piece as consolation. “He did last longer than expected,” she says, and goes inside to drag her sensei out of his room.

(Iruka sits in one of the chairs and watches the rest of Team 7 - and Hinata - busy themselves around the cake and gifts. He eats his cake with quiet patience until Sakura drags Kakashi back downstairs, and throws him back to Team 7, suddenly looking much more like a scared teenager than the grandpa he was assigned to be.

Iruka watches Kakashi socialize, and panic, and try to escape once again. Iruka throws his fork at him, and when Kakashi brings it back, Iruka kisses him on the cheek with frosting covered lips.

“You’re cute for a grandpa,” he says, as Kakashi blushes.)

 

_we fear._

The Hokage is not supposed to respond to threats like this, but Kakashi is personally invested in the outcome, so despite the pleadings of his well meaning guard, he’s out the window and on his way to the academy before his kohai can finish his sigh.

And he’s not sure what he’s expecting as he enters the classroom, but what he finds is not it. The how’s and why’s of enemy nin breaking into Konoha can be addressed later, because the now is more than enough to demand his full attention.

Iruka stands below a Sound nin, his arms crossed, his expression a disinterested blank. The woman above him hangs with her mouth gagged, and her body cut - the wire holding her presses into her flesh with every squirming movement, and she bleeds slowly from the lacerations.

Iruka steps forward, closer to the woman, and brings a steady hand to her face. He makes a fist in her hair, jerking her forward, unperturbed by her moan of pain, or by the blood that drains from her with heavy-sounding drops to the floor.

“I understand why you came here,” he says, patient, like any man with an important lesson to teach would be. “But you realize what you did was stupid, don’t you?”

Iruka sighs when she doesn’t answer. “I suppose the question was rhetorical anyway,” he jerks her further down into the wires, now cutting into her bone. He kneels, his face level with hers, holding her up by her hair to look at him.

“No one will hurt my students and live.”

Kakashi recognizes the look on her face, the faded acceptance of her fate, just at the moment Iruka trips the wires. Her body cut, she falls to the floor in uneven, heavy chunks.

In the silence that follows, Kakashi sees brand new. The Iruka in front of him is not the man whose bed he has shared for the past four years. He is something different, something separate from the smiles and funny stories of rebellious academy children.

Iruka creates killers, Kakashi knows, and Kakashi shouldn’t be surprised by what he sees in front of him. It takes a soldier to make a soldier, it takes a man like Iruka to nurture the small flame in a child and turn it into the inferno that can blight out the enemies of the Leaf.

But a man like Iruka has to do so much more than nurture, he has to protect - quickly, efficiently, ruthlessly - the future of the village that lies in his classroom. The body on the floor is a testament to that, to the duality in the man Kakashi watches before him.

You don’t make ANBU on bloodline alone.

Iruka kneels down, and with one hand turns the Sound nin’s head over, her dead eyes staring, unblinking and away.

“She was very young,” he says. “Do you ever wonder when we’ll finally decide they’re too young to die?”

All the time, Kakashi thinks, as Cat steps beside him. Wasp comes in next, and thanks Iruka personally, her shoulders shaking in relief, as Iruka offers her his usual placating smile while she breaks the veneer of ANBU stoicism to hug him.

(Ah, Kakashi thinks. Right. Wasp is an Aburame, and the little boy nearly killed is her son.)

There’s debriefing, and clean up, and suddenly Iruka has left the mass of chaos. Kakashi is left to wait until home to talk.

 

_we begin again._

Kakashi finds Iruka where he expects to: in the spare, empty room of their house, staring ahead at the blank white wall like it is capable of giving him the answers he desires.

“Does it actually help you to lock yourself away in here?” Kakashi asks as he sits beside Iruka, taking his hand.

Iruka gives him a look. “I’m not going to take advice on proper coping mechanisms from you, so don’t even start.”

He supposes Iruka has a point there, so Kakashi keeps his mouth shut as he leans beside Iruka. The silence stretches on between them, with Kakashi’s heavy weight pressing into Iruka, and Iruka quietly bearing against him.

Like always, Kakashi thinks. Always quiet, always accepting, always the rock that takes the harshness of the ocean in stride and never complains when he is worn down and away.

“You know that you didn’t do a bad thing,” Kakashi starts, and gives Iruka’s hand a squeeze. “But something is bothering you.”

“Killing to protect people I care about is not a bad thing, no.” Iruka leans in, and rests his head on Kakashi’s shoulder. “But it’s not something I particularly enjoy doing.”

Kakashi thinks of the Iruka he saw beneath the body - the man with the distant eyes, the man Kakashi has never seen before, not in the years they’ve known each other, and certainly not in the years they’ve been together - and he wonders.

He wonders if it matters at all, really, that Iruka has a secret self tucked away that perfectly; that there is part of Umino Iruka that Hatake Kakashi had not seen before night, and could not see again.

And is it healthy to be like that? Is it healthy for the man who coaxed Kakashi out of his silence and his rage to have something just as unpleasant inside of him, unearthed and left to fester?

“You don’t want to talk about this.” Kakashi decides. He can feel Iruka sigh, and slump against him, drained.

“I don’t want to talk about this.” Iruka says.

That would be okay for irrelevant things, but the man in the classroom was not irrelevant, the quiet man beside Kakashi now is not irrelevant, and never will be.

“Not now, but later?”

Iruka seems to consider it as he watches the wall, watches the same blank space he always seems to come back to in moments of confusion and grief.

“Hey,” Kakashi takes his hand away, and wraps his arm around Iruka, pulling him close.  “We can talk about this later. But for what it’s worth -- you did what was right, and Wasp has a kid waiting for her back home because of you."

He plants a kiss firmly on the top of Iruka’s head - affectionate, accepting, and refusing to let go.

"Not bad for a paper-pushing ANBU."

 

**Author's Note:**

> You gave some amazing prompts, but unfortunately real life got in the way of my developing them the way I wanted to. I tried to incorporate parts of your request into this story though, and I hope you can see where/how and that they work. Thank you for giving me a chance to write this! As for the one non KakaIru ship mentioned -- I tried to stick to canon, but if it's a notp and you'd rather have a different ship instead, tell me and I'll change it (:


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